Keyens: PTS Update June 21st

Originally Posted by Keyens

Originally Posted by Rivkah

We are pretty chill, but I'm not 100% sure that wanting a post more than once every fiscal quarter is tantamount to "backseat developing." I don't think that that level of noncommunication should be seen as normal.We are people who care a lot about the game and its development direction and are understandably frustrated when the communication has been one-way for months. A more equitable level of communication would go a long way towards reducing negativity overall. People tend to get negative when they feel like their concerns are being ignored, it's basic human nature.

I hate to break some bad news to you, but the nature of a live product (and an MMO) makes this being often a one way communication a part of the deal. As the industry has morphed and adapted and times have changed, development needs have shifted and devs work harder than ever to keep up with content demands as well as making decisions that will have rippling impacts for *literally* years to come (we wrestled with about a half dozen ideas before we settled on legendaries for example). This leads to many developers working a ton to get stuff in and as polished as humanly possible. This will invariably cut down on people's ability to post, not to mention their stress. Everyone I know in the industry has their crunch time horror stories (I remember sleeping at my desk a few times at another company).That is not to say things are ideal as they are. I know personally I would like to post more and try to provide greater clarity about designs and talk about stuff I'd like to work on in RIFT (I have something like a dozen soul designs floating around my hard drive in varying states of completeness) because this is my passion. Getting there, however, requires work from both sides. This means players need to actively resist urges to lash out and in general help put the kibosh on it when they see it. This makes it much easier for a dev to drop in with whatever.